We recently created some videos to highlight how our students are expanding the kingdom using their time and talents. We showed these videos at our annual Launch Retreat, where we encourage them to reach the local schools for Christ. I pray that these videos would encourage you to equip your students to see their schools as a mission field. Enjoy!
Jay and Dawson Testimonial from LifePoint Plano on Vimeo.
Emily Riddell from LifePoint Plano on Vimeo.
Just like in the business world where people need goals, students need goals!
Just like in the business world where people need to see the vision of where they are going, students need to see your vision and where you are going!
“Where there is no VISION, the people PERISH.” Proverbs 29:18
Would the students in your student ministry be able to describe in two words WHY you have STUDENT MINISTRY.
Our students, I believe now, after launching a VISION NIGHT, understand we do student ministry for two words: LIFE CHANGE!!
JESUS specializes in LIFE CHANGE and HE is our ULTIMATE EXAMPLE!!
So before you kickoff your spring season of Student Ministry or Fall Season of Student Ministry have a VISION NIGHT for your students!
At the VISION Night:
When students are passionate about Jesus, long to see their friends lives changed, and want your student ministry to feel like the most welcoming, most friendly place on the planet, I believe your Student Ministry can go to the Next Level!!
Many of these ideas came from reading Jeanne Mayo’s book “Thriving Youth Groups!!” It is a must buy!!!
What this all boils down to is getting your students to BUY IN to the student ministry vision and BUY IN to WHY you do what you do!
This morning, Colin Cowherd had a beautiful rant about how we no longer allow people, and specifically children, to fail. Colin noted how failure is an important ingredient for success. Some of the most successful people were told no or had early failures before finding their way (Aaron Rodgers, Michael Jordan, Bob Costas). Failure makes us stronger.
So many parents are terrified of their children failing. Everyone has to be a winner. My fear is that if we teach children that everyone wins and that everyone will be successful, we may have encouraged children, but we will have depressed, anxious, and crushed teens and emerging adolescents.
Here is the reality: We live in a fallen and sinful world that is difficult and where there is failure.
Jesus never tells us to be winners. He tells us to follow Him, and that He will be present with us in good times and bad.
Now I’m not saying that we need to crush little Johnny’s spirit and tell him at age 5 he will never make it to the big leagues, but we shouldn’t shelter our children from failure. What we should do is show them how failure can be used for growth and perspective.
Jeremiah 29:11 was not written for winners who have never felt weak or vulnerable.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”
May we as parents and youth pastors free students and children from the bondage of perfection and help them become good stewards of the failures they will experience.
Sunday we had our first Small Group Leader Training. Every year we tinker with our training and try to make them better than the year before. We want to honor the time that our small group leaders put in and make the training worth missing time on Sunday afternoons with families, napping, watching football, or getting stuff done around the house.
Many youth ministry leader trainings are nothing more than band-aid meetings. By that, I mean youth pastors helping volunteers know how to better control kids, relate to teens, or address specific issues students are going through. While there is a time and a space for peripheral issues, that is precisely what they are…peripheral issues. Things going on around the central focus of seeing students engage with the gospel in community.
This year our trainings will be less, “here is how to keep a teenagers attention,” and more theology driven.
I believe that if trainings are centered around core doctrine and theology, we will see the depth of our leaders and the quality of our groups increase. For example, this Sunday we taught our leaders about the “Knowability of God.” We concentrated on the idea that while God is incomprehensible, He has chosen to reveal himself to us in a variety of ways and desires for us to ever pursue Him and His will.
After camping on this idea for a bit, we then turned and helped them understand why this is important for students. We examined how discussing integrity and purity are mere behavioral modification discussions unless they are centered in how doing these things help us further know God and walk in His will.
In student ministry, we must make the theological turn. I know authors like Andrew Root are doing a great job of leading in this direction and we would be wise to follow.
If you are looking for where to begin, I would suggest picking up one of a few resources:
1. Christian Belief: Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know by Wayne Grudem – 9 bucks & streamlined
2. Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem – more robust but $32 bucks
3. Taking Theology to Youth Ministry by Andrew Root – youth centered & $11 bucks
(Complete Transparency – The above links are affiliate links, which means I get a few cents if you buy a book. This goes toward keeping The Youth Ministry Blog awesome, so thanks in advance if you chose to get one! I only offer resources I believe will be helpful for you.)
Whether you use one of the above resources or if you already have a book on doctrine and theology, come up with a plan for your leaders. Look at the number of trainings you plan to have and let your leaders know where you hope to go and what you hope to accomplish this year. Cast vision for the trainings. Get them excited about diving deeper and show them how it will benefit their Small Groups.
Please let me know if you have any questions about this. I would love to answer them. Comment below and let me know how you plan to train leaders this year!
This week I’ve been busy. I’ve had more meetings than I usually do. While this normally drains me, this week is different. Instead of meetings about budgets, strategies, mission statements and events, this week I’ve been plain old pastoring. You remember pastoring, right? It’s where you spend time listening to people, talking about real life, opening scripture, laughing, sharing stories and praying.
You know at the end of my life I might be ashamed about the amount of time I spent looking for the perfect background for my talk slides. I might regret the amount of time I gave to searching for the perfect video clip. But I don’t think I’ll regret the amount of time I spent listening to and praying for people.
What are the basics skills of youth ministry? If you go by the blogs and books out there, you might get the impression that quality youth pastors have good time management skills, know how to prepare and deliver an engaging talk, have creative worship spaces and have a solid ministry strategy. While these are good things, they will not make you a true shepherd of people.
Pastoral care is the bread and butter of youth ministry. It always will be. Unless we are willing to listen to people, spend uninterrupted time with them and shepherd them toward the feet of Jesus, everything else will be busy work. No amount of flash and glitz can make up for good old fashioned pastoring. The way that happens is by giving your presence to other people.
The good news is that pastoral care multiplies itself. The burden isn’t on you to make sure that every teen in your ministry is personally cared for by you. Instead, when you pour into a few leaders, students and parents they will be able to do the same for others. They will follow your example and look for ways to listen, pray, and encourage other people.
I know we all know this. I know that we all got into ministry because God gave us a vision for life-on-life change. It’s just that we need to be reminded of it from time to time. I need to be reminded of it all the time.
What about you? How will you make sure that pastoring people stays at the heart of your ministry? I promise, you won’t regret it.
1. How can the Youth Ministry play a larger role in the church?
2. What perception does my church have about youth ministry? Does it need work?
3. How am I growing in my understanding of adolescent culture/development/faith?
4. Is my family suffering because of my church ministry?
5. Do I have a Paul (mentor) and do I have a Timothy (disciple)?
6. How am I expanding in theological understanding?
7. What is feeding my soul outside of sermon/small group preparation?
Welcome to The 3rd Youth Ministry Blog Podcast!
1. Do a meet-n-greet for 6th Graders (or whatever your transition grade might be).
Regardless of when students enter your area of ministry, you will want to do some form of Meet-n-Greet event. If you are a high school pastor, use it to get to know your incoming Freshmen and their parents. If you are in “tweener” ministry with 4th & 5th graders, do it to help parents terrified their “little baby” is growing up.
2. Use it to establish rapport with parents!
Building trust and rapport with parents is crucial. Make sure the first experience they have with you (and your ministry) is a positive and encouraging one. Use this time to cast vision for the parents. Project where you would like to see little Johnny be by the time he exits your ministry. Tell them what you hope to accomplish, how you can work as a team, and what resources are available to them. When you end your time with these new parents, make sure you make yourself available. Let the parents know they can come to you at ANY time, not just after little Johnny gets caught __________.
3. Use it to get to know your new students.
If you have been working in tandem with your Children’s ministry, then many of the students might already know you. Use this time to get to know them a little better. Break down some of the walls they might have built about how “scary” the student ministry can be. Give them something like a t-shirt from a past event, a youth ministry sticker, really anything free will go a long way with new students!
4. Resources:
MailChimp Email Service – Free & Easy way to start a Newsletter to parents!
Parent Point Card – Download and print on card stock.
Parent Point PNG – Use this to brand your parent communications
It seems like every conference I’ve gone to in the last year has had a common theme woven through them. The practice of discipleship keeps coming up. We Christians love to come up with discipleship plans and models. We are hooked on the idea that we can come up with the perfect methodology to make other people more like Jesus.
I have yet to find a passage in the Gospels where Jesus clearly defines the process of discipleship. In fact, Jesus’ plan of discipleship seems to be simply “Follow me.” It’s in observing, listening and imitating Jesus that we become like Him. Paul followed suit when he said, “you should imitate me, just as I imitate Christ.” (1 Cor. 11:1 NLT)
So, this naturally leads me to the questions “What should discipleship look like in our youth ministries?”
If you’re looking for a five-point answer to this question then you can stop reading because I don’t have one. Instead I have a thought.
What if a key factor of the discipleship of teens is to normalize the Christian faith.
Let me unpack that. Normalizing the Christian faith does NOT mean that we live ordinary lives. It does’t mean that teens are unchallenged to take risks for the Gospel.
To normalize the Christian faith is to create an environment where teens see how the Christian life fits into their everyday normal lives.
Many of our ministries do the exact opposite. Think of the last evangelism push that you did in your youth group. Did you make a big deal about your students inviting their friends or talking to others about Jesus? Did you bring someone up and give them a big prize (as I have done in recent months)? I think an unintended consequence of these kinds of over exuberant celebrations is that we communicate that evangelism is hard and takes an extraordinary level of faith.
In discipleship we create an environment where they see that following Christ means a radical shift in what we think “normal” is. This radical shift leads to a new normal where prayer, scripture, sacrifice and sharing Christ happen everyday because of our new identity in Christ.
An example of normalizing is that over the past year, I’ve been getting into healthier patterns of eating and exercise. I had to break many unhealthy habits, including my love for cheese covered foods. Over the course of the year I have “normalized” my portion sizes and my food choices. Has it been easy? No way! But because I’ve become accustomed to my new normal and seen the difference it makes in my own life, I am changed from the inside out. When we normalize discipleship we communicate to our students that the Christian life is a way different kind of life, but it is available for everyone not just the super-spiritual.
For us, this means that this semester we are experimenting with normalizing the practice of evangelism. Instead of making it a big deal, we’re going to talk about it as if it’s an everyday occurrence. Instead of counting successes for our win column, we’re going to share stories of students trying (even failing) and we’re going to learn from it. Instead of coming up with a one size fits all method, we’re going to help our students feel natural talking about Jesus and addressing questions in everyday conversations. We hope that by not hyping up evangelism, more students will actually feel that sharing Christ is within their reach.
What about you? Is there an aspect of the Christian life that you would like to see normalized in your students? What are you going to do to make that practice a new normal for them?
I have a confession to make: I’m an optimist.
By nature I can spin anything to a positive. If I accidentally cut off one of my fingers, I would be happy that I still have nine others. If my dog got run over, I would be excited about getting a new puppy. I know, “that’s just wrong,” but yes, I have a serious positivity problem.
But I’m not alone. I am preaching through the book of Philippians with my students on Sunday mornings and I’m pretty sure Paul was the supreme optimist. At the end of chapter one, Paul states, “The former proclaim Christ out of rivalry, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.” (Philippians 1:17-18)
In this passage we find Paul in prison in Rome writing to the church at Philippi where there are other leaders trying to replace Paul’s headship. What if that happened to you? What if you got thrown in prison for preaching, then a week later you found out that your church had hired a new youth pastor? Would you be as optimistic as Paul?
“Well, at least the gospel is being proclaimed!” Even I have a hard time spinning that…
Here’s the deal: I think students need a healthy dose of positivity! Every day they are surrounded by negativity…it’s called High School. But I also think I, I mean we, can go too far.
So this morning I unleashed my rarely seen, “Negative Nancy.” I was at a morning school Bible study and I wanted to prepare students for what troubles the upcoming year could hold. I wanted them to understand that our joy in Christ is not dependent upon our circumstances.
Paul got it. Paul was in prison and being replaced, but Paul didn’t see his circumstances…Paul saw Jesus.
I pray that my optimism would not be self-induced, but the result of Christ in me. I pray that you would find your joy in Him. I pray that we would prepare students for the hardships of life in a way that does not create a false sense of security, but in a way that points them to Jesus regardless of circumstance.
“Don’t forget to drop off your prayer requests in the big white box at the back of the room!”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said that phrase.
On our weekly bulletin we have a “Let’s Get Acquainted” tear off that allows students to write down prayer requests.
While this is FAR from ground-breaking, I have discovered a few things about communication cards:
1. If they are an option, you will get a minimal response.
2. If you provide a response space in the service, where they are focused to writing out prayer requests, you will gain invaluable insight into the hurts and struggles of teenagers.
My challenge: Mark off the last few minutes of an upcoming service for your students to write down prayer requests.
Oh, and then ACTUALLY PRAY over those requests!